


Once Upon a Time

by chucks_prophet



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Alternate Universe - Library, Bonding Over Words, Falling In Love, First Meetings, Fluff, Librarian Castiel, M/M, References to Ghostbusters, Side Story, Story within a Story, Storytelling, Tooth-Rotting Fluff, Was Gonna Be Serious But I Ain't Got Time For That, Writer Castiel, Writer Dean
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-05-13
Updated: 2016-05-13
Packaged: 2018-06-08 02:59:56
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,249
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6836329
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/chucks_prophet/pseuds/chucks_prophet
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Satisfied, Castiel clicks his pen, closes the book, and bites his sloped bottom lip. </p><p>When he comes back from his lunch break, there’s another *ahem* addition to the story:</p><p>(For the record, he /was/ hot. You know, before the epic face melt.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	Once Upon a Time

**Author's Note:**

> I was truly inspired by this flickering idea for the first time in a while. Hope you're inspired by it, too.
> 
> IMPORTANT A/N: Dean's writing starts with **. Castiel's starts with ^^.

 

_**Once upon a time, there was a boy._

That’s how it starts, both _the_ story and Castiel’s story.

The journal’s nothing special, just one of those salt and pepper composition notebooks you’d see slapped on the desks of a seventh grade classroom. It’s new, if not going by the razor-straight spine and the blank name tag, then the pristine pages.

There’s nothing before or after those sloppy baby caps. They just left their journal on the back of a table that’s seen better days, and haven’t bothered to return since.

Honestly, it’s stupid. Castiel shouldn’t have even opened the damn thing. It could’ve been the journal of a death-row delinquent, or a time-fluent stalker, or—

Well, you get the point.

But of course, as a student librarian, he’s big into books. He has to know whose story this is, or at least help them out if they’re having a severe case of writer’s block. So, naturally, he adds to the first sentence, in his equally sloppy cursive:

_^^This boy had superpowers._

Castiel closes the book, sets it back on the table, and tends to another hopelessly confused renter.

***

If anyone asks, Castiel has a nervous tick when his hand swipes across the cover the following day.

_^^This boy had ** ~~superpowers.~~ a laundry list of non-heroic complexes. Then again, he could turn invisible every now and then. That wasn’t news to his dad or half of America, but it did freak the hell out of a girl’s locker room once._

Castiel actually laughs, judging by the death glare across the hall from his boss Naomi, a little _too_ loud. It’s the same person, going by the handwriting. Castiel has no trouble picking up a pen:

_^^Only when he accidentally found himself on one count of indecent exposure and another on invasion of privacy he realized, sitting in a jail cell while his creamy corpse oozed fat, pimply globs from every crevice of his body, that he needed to rethink his priorities._

Satisfied, Castiel clicks his pen, closes the book, and bites his sloped bottom lip.

When he comes back from his lunch break, there’s another *ahem* addition to the story:

_**(For the record, he **was** hot. You know, before the epic face melt.)_

***

 _^^_ ** _Anyway,_** _when he got out, promptly greeted by his posse—a flock of geese to each he gave a name: Duck 1, Duck 2, and, simply, Goose, he decided to make a name for himself. Not an actual name, because that would just be pathetic. No, he decided to christen himself after the man he got the teardrop tattoo from: ** Dean. Dean Winchester. And with that knock-off name, he hit the streets of **Lawrence (his hometown), to fight the fire starters of the city **(the forest),_ _and save his people from_ _the Stay Puft Marshmallow Man._

Whoever’s responding to Dean cleverly leaves blank spaces for his own Mad Lib-inspired genius. He decided to keep it real, because if he was honest with himself for once, he’d say he actually likes where his story’s going—his _fake_ story, that is.

He’d never spent so much time in a library. Sam’s starting to get worried.

Before whipping out his pen and writing, he glances around the library and bites his lip.

_**Now, most people would think to revert to the back of a Pillsbury Doughboy canister. Dean, however, wasn’t that smart. Dean went out of his way to build a proton pack from a busted carburetor and steal a pair of goggles from his Chem Lab. He also brought along his trusty sidekick, his little brother, Sammy, and the overcompensating prison guard, ^^ Castiel, last name TBD by the sympathy of the **other** narrator._

Dean laughs, judging by the death glare from the librarian with too much forehead and not enough rack, a little too loud.

_**Castiel, he didn’t have any superpowers, either. Well, except his chunky consistency._

_^^But he did have a secret he was harboring from Dean._

***

_**He was secretly a Paula Abdul fan. Not that it mattered for the story, but it was worth mentioning._

Dean doesn’t hear from his co-author for the next few days after writing those last two sentences. He wants to ask around, see if he’s sick or something, but he doesn’t think “I’m looking for my library pen pal, no, I don’t know what he looks like or probably how to pronounce his name correctly, but I know he puts little halos above his I’s” is a viable description.

So, he does what any good author would do in his position: He continues the story.

_**Together, they fought Muffin Man’s rival. Dean conveniently roped his raw rolls with a lasso he’d been carrying around since his Indiana Jones phase and wrangled the monster to the ground—totally **not** causing a pinch of mass hysteria and thousands of dollars in city property. _

***

Nothing. He thought for sure the Indiana Jones line would send Castiel over the edge.

Dean scribbles some more words before picking up his journal and heading towards the non-fiction section.

***

_**Sammy was next. He circled around Puft’s unicorn horn legs and tied him up with a long, extra-snotty loogie, effectively keeping him in place while Cas (an affectionate, but mostly lazy nickname Dean had schemed up in all his time inconveniently thinking about the guy) blasted him with “Opposites Attract”._

_**The Stay Marshmallow Puft Man oozed the same way Dean did in the pen when he basically became Deadpool and exploded just as cool. The crowd (the ones that weren’t covered in raw dough or dead, for that matter) rejoiced, and Dean seized his opportunity to truly redeem himself. He rushed over to Cas and swept him off his gooey feet, claiming him in a messy, but heart-pounding, brain-boiling, everything-tingling_

“What?” asks Cas, body currently performing all those actions as he flicks his gaze to Dean. “What happens?”

Dean, the Steven Moffat he is, sics a set of 32 pearly white Altoids on him and leans over Castiel’s counter. Of all books, he just had to run into Dean while shelfing Neil Patrick Harris’s _Choose Your Own Autobiography._

The guy looks like he just came from the runway, with fair mocha hair touching the sky, eyes teeming with a thousand sheets of forestry, squishy pink lips, and a body fit to wrap the world around.

Sometimes real life is better than fiction.

While trying to tactfully avoid the man whom he writes said fiction _with,_ now is not one of those times.

“Nothing,” responds Dean—and oh yeah, his voice is also super deep, so that helps—with a shrug.

“Nothing?”

“Nothing,” Dean repeats more assuredly as he meets Cas’s watering eyes with a splash of his Earth, “At least not until you finish it.” Cas preps himself to say something, but Dean’s quicker: “I want you, Cas whatever-your-last-name-is, to tell me how my story ends.”

Cas feels like he’s trapped in the ocean beneath the hull of a large boat. He wants to breathe a sigh of relief, but all the air’s been sucked into the vacuum of the sea. He’s torn between a desperate man’s attempt at calling out for help and seeking out his own.

Clinging onto Dean by the nape of his neck like a life preserver and leaning in, he chooses the second option. “Novak,” he breathes against his lips, finally surfacing from after what feels like hours in the rough sea, “the name’s Novak.”

Needless to say, the author is satisfied with the ending.

 

 

 


End file.
